Medical gauzes are typically prepared by weaving a bleached cotton yarn or hot-compressing absorbent cotton sheets containing a viscose short staple fiber with a porous polymer film. The woven cotton gauzes have disadvantages of requiring a complex manufacturing process and not being easily removed from wound sites, thus causing pain to patients upon removal.
Gauzes made of only absorbent cotton reduce patients' discomfort and utilize the excellent absorbing ability of cotton. However, due to its property of adhering to wound sites, absorbent cotton is difficult to detach from the wound site. Also, since gauzes made only of cotton have weak tension, to overcome this weakness, it is wrapped with a woven or non-woven fabric to form a double-layered structure. On the other hand, gauzes manufactured by hot compression of absorbent cotton containing a viscose short staple fiber with a porous polymer film are easily removed from wound sites, but are problematic in terms of having low absorption ability, causing psychological stress in received patients, and generating static electricity.
These problems can be solved by a mesh cotton disclosed in Korean Pat. Application No. 1020020039703 submitted by the present applicant and titled “Mesh cotton with mesh-type net integrated with surface thereof into a single body and method of manufacturing the same”. The mesh cotton disclosed in the Korean patent application submitted by the present applicant is prepared by alternately layering cotton sheets containing an adhesive resin that melts at low temperature, for example, by a spray method after being defatted, and pure cotton sheets not treated with any compound after being defatted, forming a mesh-type net on a surface of multi-layered cotton sheets, and subjecting the multi-layered cotton to hot compression. During the hot compression, the adhesive resin is melted, leading to integration of the multi-layered cotton sheets with the meshed net formed on the surface thereof into a single body.
However, in the conventional mesh cotton, the mesh structure is often destroyed during hot compression. Thus, the conventional mesh cotton, although a mesh structure is formed on a surface thereof, is not easy to completely remove from applied wound sites. Also, in this case, separations occur between the multi-layered cotton sheets attached to each other with the adhesive resin. If a stronger adhesive resin is used to prevent the multi-layered cotton sheets from being separated from each other, the resulting mesh cotton has low elasticity and is thus hard.